Is Vipassana a fast track to liberation?

Twenty-six centuries ago Gautama Buddha designed a meditation technique that has been helping people not only train their minds to stay in balance, but also to liberate them from Samsara (reincarnation chain).

Gautama used to say that there were Buddhas (enlightened people), there are Buddhas, and there will be Buddhas after him, but his role is to provide an efficient meditation technique that could help people reach liberation (moksha or nirvana) in the present life that will allow one never to come back to the materialistic reality and to experience suffering again.

Before the invention of his own meditation technique, Gautama had tried different meditation methods designed by others, but he never was satisfied by the quality and deepness of them, so he invented his own, which is known as the Vipassana meditation technique.

What the Vipassana technique is about

In short, the Vipassana meditation technique is about getting rid of addictions that we have accumulated during innumerable materialistic existences. These addictions (filth and/or imperfections) are hidden in the deeper mind — our subconscious.

In the beginning of the Vipassana meditation course, a student’s goal is calming down his or her mind by focusing on breathing and clearing the mind from thoughts.

Then, the students do meditation exercises for activating the subconscious. The access to the subconscious is going to provide an option for self-healing, first of all — a physical body, and later on — a soul.

The subconscious is like a dark room, and concentrating on breathing shall light it, making the previously hidden sins (addictions) visible.

We experience those addictions through the sensations of our bodies.

The goal of these exercises is to keep us indifferent to those sensations.

Why Vipassana

Imagine yourself as a traveler who came to this world with a heavy luggage of karma and a desire to make it lighter.
The project named Your Life is already designed for you, and everything that you need can be found by following the Your Destiny script. Your Life project is interactive, and your task is to correct your sins (imperfections) that you have done during your previous existences and to make your luggage lighter.

You could succeed with this job and return back to Your Home with a smaller bag, or you could fail, generating extra negative karma and return home with a larger bag than before. The smallest group of travelers will come home with no luggage at all. This group of people are the luckiest ones — burning away all sins (negative karma), they generate no reason to return back to Samsara.
One of the techniques that help people grab this good fortune is Vipassana. 

Benefits of Vipassana

The students who are following the Code of Discipline and precisely heeding the teacher’s instructions are getting a chance to get great benefits from the Vipassana meditation.

These benefits are:

·      To train a mind to stay balance in everyday life.

·      To increase the energy level of the physical body.

·      To study the philosophy of Gautama Buddha in the interpretation of his loyal follower, S.N. Goenka, the influential Vipassana meditation teacher.

·      To get in touch with your own subconscious.

·      To get healed.

·      To obtain a release of the old hurt.

·      To get the ability to transform negativity into positivity.

·      To receive a supernatural experience.

·      To network with like people.
·      To reach the ultimate goal of a human being - get redemption from Samsara - an endless cycle of births and deaths.

*Note:  This article is based on my personal experience and thoughts after my first 10-day meditation course of Vipassana, and is not presented to be an absolute truth. – Jacklyn A. Lo.

The next article will tell about possible side effects of the Vipassana, the organization of the training, and accommodations in the retreat territory.